Boz Scaggs celebrates new LP A Fool to Care

Boz Scaggs’ classic 1976 album Silk Degrees, his best selling disc of blue-eyed soul featuring such hits as Lowdown and Lido Shuffle, will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year.

And the 71-year-old singer-songwriter-guitarist says the occasion will be noted.

“We’re thinking about re-creating the album in some way, maybe not literally,” said the elegantly dressed Scaggs.

“Everybody’s alive and well, except for the drummer, who made the record so it remains to be seen, but things are in the works.”

Some 39 years and over a dozen albums later, Scaggs is back with A Fool to Care, a collection of mostly soul, R&B, blues and roots-rock covers (including The Band’s Whispering Pines) that follows 2013’s critically acclaimed Memphis.

We caught up with the Scaggs in Toronto recently to talk A Fool to Care, which includes duets with Bonnie Raitt and Lucinda Williams, producing his own wine at his Napa-Sonoma home and having a rock journalist son.

I read that you’re having more fun now as a recording artist with the last few albums. Why is that?

The thing that makes it the most fun is that I’m not writing ... and if I don’t have to write it, it becomes a tremendous load off me because I have a hard time finishing. The lyric part does not come very easily for me. I really struggle with that sometimes.

How did you come up with the covers for this record?

Songs that (me and producer Steve Jordan) like. Obviously it’s got to be a song that my voice I feel can give a reading that’s special. We want to make the song our own in some way or another.

Your son Austin Scaggs writes for Rolling Stone so would you, or have you, ever sat down together for an article?

Not really because one of the great things about an interview is it’s fresh. He and I know each other very, very well and I would just be reiterating something that he already knows. I think that probably the separation is important to him. He’s very helpful. I’m very close to him. He recommended a number of songs that we recorded on these last two records.

What makes you fan of The Band?

They blend together in a way that nobody else can. Their chemistry is phenomenal. It’s really loose, but the feeling and the grooves are deep and rich. And then that point of view that they write from, it’s very esoteric in some ways, it’s very Dylanesque as it would be, but it comes from the heartland of Canada and America.

What is your red wine called, how much do you produce annually and where can you get it?

It’s called Scaggs Vineyard wine. Depending on the crop, it’s 350 to 400 cases a year. It’s very small. There are a number of restaurants around the country that have it.